Did Trump bring a lot of this on himself? Undoubtedly. As progressive journalist Katha Pollitt suggested in a year-end essay, it’s nobody’s fault but Trump’s if, for example, he cannot “make a sympathy call sound sympathetic.” And if the opprobrium was directed only at the 45th U.S. president, 2017 wouldn’t have been such an ordeal. But progressives’ anger is much broader than that.

“The main difference is that I hate people now,” Pollitt also wrote. “Well, not all people, of course. Just people who voted for Trump.”

That’s a lot of people, 62 million of them, and a lot of hate to be directing at your fellow Americans. There’s a better way, which liberals once knew. Some still do. Madonna reminded us of it back in January. Her notorious “blow up the White House” riff — Trump-like in its shock value — was a preamble to a more compassionate point.